Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand File Lawsuit Against City of Chicago over Cortland Chicago River TIF for Lincoln Yards Development

On Wednesday, April 17, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the national Lawyers Committee on behalf of Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education filed a lawsuit to halt the creation of the Cortland and Chicago River TIF district and the capture of up to $1.3 billion dollars of taxpayer money. In addition, the suit argues that the City’s racially and ethnically discriminatory administration of the TIF system has disproportionately benefited areas in majority-White census tracts to the detriment of areas in majority-African American and majority-Hispanic census tracts.

The filed and stamped copy of the complaint can be downloaded here: https://docdro.id/jA1dX3E

On Wednesday, April 17, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the national Lawyers Committee on behalf of Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education filed a lawsuit to halt the creation of the Cortland and Chicago River TIF district and the capture of up to $1.3 billion dollars of taxpayer money. In addition, the suit argues that the City’s racially and ethnically discriminatory administration of the TIF system has disproportionately benefited areas in majority-White census tracts to the detriment of areas in majority-African American and majority-Hispanic census tracts.

It’s almost CPS Spring Break! We have a bunch of stuff to share with you before CPS students are out of school for a week. Happy reading...

In a historic election, Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor on April 2. For now, the mayor still controls the school system. On September 5, 2018, we released this statement: Rahm’s not running- What does that mean for the public schools? In it, we reflect on our time with Rahm and we list the ed policies we have deep concerns about. We stand by this list and look forward to Mayor Lightfoot using it as she works with all stakeholders - students, parents, educators, and community members -- to reimagine Chicago Public Schools. More on what parents want from our new mayor, here.

Chalkbeat Chicago: Lori Lightfoot is Chicago’s next mayor — which means big changes are coming to schools and check this out: Letters to Lori Lightfoot: Tell Chicago’s mayor-elect about your school

We attended and spoke at the March 27, 2019 monthly meeting of the unelected CPS Board of Education meeting. Our prepared statement is below. You can find our live tweets from the meeting here.

Before the meeting, we participated in a press conference with parent leaders from across the city and from various community-based organizations. You can find the media alert here, video of the press conference here, and statements from the press conference here.

Be an informed voter! Chicago’s Municipal Election is Tuesday, February 26.

As we go through our exciting new RYH changes, we plan to send an email newsletter every other week. Please sign up to receive these newsletters here. You can read the one sent Friday, February 8, 2019, below. 

Below is an email we sent with our sister org, Raise Your Hand Action, on January 30, 2019.

RYH and more recently, our sister-org, RYH Action have been leading the fight for TIF reform in Chicago for 9 years. One of our first campaigns in 2010 was delivering 5,000 letters and emails to Mayor Daley demanding he declare a TIF surplus to help plug the budget hole at CPS. This led to over $90M being returned to the schools.

Yesterday we learned that the CTU set at strike date for October 11th. 95% of the 90% of members who voted authorized a strike. Now there will be an intensive 10-day period of bargaining between CPS and CTU. Our hope is that there will be a rapid and fair resolution before a strike takes effect.